[edk2-devel] [edk2-platforms] Enable GitHub PR, protected branches, and 'push' label

[Marvin Häuser]

Hi Rebecca and Gerd,

Replying to 2 mails at once...

> On 17. Mar 2023, at 11:36, Rebecca Cran <rebecca at bsdio.com> wrote:
> 
> I like that proposed workflow.
> 
> I've also been wondering if we could consider choosing a different product for patch reviews that supports our desired workflow better, such as Gitlab or Phorge (the new Phabricator project).

I'd be very cautious with suggesting / approving more tooling. It gets more confusing (what is hosted where), it gets more complicated to maintain (who hosts what and is "guaranteed" to be available to fix things), and so on.

> 
> If anyone would be willing to donate money for colocation, I'd be happy to move one or more of my servers into a datacenter and use them for hosting TianoCore services.
> 
> 
> -- 
> 
> Rebecca Cran
> 
> 
> On 3/17/23 3:33 AM, Gerd Hoffmann wrote:
>> On Thu, Mar 16, 2023 at 01:59:49PM -0600, Rebecca Cran wrote:
>>> Is this still a requirement since Laszlo's departure from the project?
>>> 
>>> I seem to recall it was him who made it a sticking point of moving to a
>>> GitHub PR workflow originally with the requirement to have emails of
>>> everything.
>> I think it is very useful to have everything on the mailing list for
>> a number of reasons:
>> 
>>  (1) In my experience reviewing patches, especially more complex ones,
>>      works better in email than in github PR workflows.

I have no experience with things like large-scale patch set review in, say, projects like the Linux kernel. However, in about 7 years of watching edk2-devel and opportunistically participating in patch review myself, I never once encountered something about mail patch review that made me think "oh, that's neat". Quite the opposite - I cannot easily cross-reference when commenting, I cannot easily see more context to the changed lines, and I cannot easily see the end result after all patches in a series have been applied. These are all things that GitHub allows me to do. I keep hearing mail patches "work better", but I never found convincing reasons for these claims. Mind sharing? :)

>>  (2) github doesn't preserve stuff like a mail archive does.  When a
>>      patch series goes through multiple revision github only preserves
>>      the latest revision which was actually merged.

Is that so? Taking this AUDK PR as an example: https://github.com/acidanthera/audk/pull/23
Note the review comments that say "Outdated" and thus refer to previous revisions of the PR. I can expand the comments to read their content, see their immediate context (of the previous change that did not end up getting merged) and I can click the file name to get an "all files changed" view of the snapshot that was reviewed. What is missing?
(I’m not sure whether the old stuff isn’t eventually wiped, though, maybe worth carefully inspecting the documentation for options).

>>  (3) Search engines seem to be better in indexing mail list archives
>>      than github pull requests.

That, unfortunately, undoubtably is true.

>> 
>> Nevertheless I see some room for improvement in our current workflow.
>> Developers often open a PR anyway for to run the CI.  So maybe we could
>> automate sending the emails and also avoid running CI twice by avoiding
>> both developer and maintainer opening a PR, with a workflow like this:
>> 
>>  * developer opens a draft PR to run CI for the patch series.
>>  * when the series passes CI and is ready un-draft the PR.
>>  * github action sends the patch series to the edk2-devel list
>>    for review (maybe only after CI passed ...).
>>  * patch review happens on the list.
>>  * in case the developer pushes updates to the branch in response to
>>    review comments the github action posts v2/v3 of the series too.
>>  * once review is done merge the PR.

That would at least be a lot better than what we have now.

Best regards,
Marvin

>> 
>> take care,
>>   Gerd



-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group.
View/Reply Online (#101335): https://edk2.groups.io/g/devel/message/101335
Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/97636248/1813853
Group Owner: devel+owner at edk2.groups.io
Unsubscribe: https://edk2.groups.io/g/devel/unsub [edk2-devel-archive at redhat.com]
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/edk2-devel-archive/attachments/20230317/9abdc8d0/attachment.htm>